Kompeitou Sky
by Mandarin Huntress
Summary: A one-shot labor of love, which—while starting as a self-respecting, plot-oriented, reflective piece—inevitably ends as a Chihiro/Haku sap-fest. That's not such a bad thing, though.


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Summary: Spirited Away fanfiction, which—though starting as a self-respecting, plot-oriented, reflective piece—inevitably ends in a Chihiro/Haku sap-fest. Told in a reverent imitation of the somewhat "telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from. Peace." 

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Spoilers: Um…duh, folks, if you haven't seen the movie—what the heck are you doing in this frugal fandom anyway? Go and see the utterly amazing movie already!

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Disclaimer: Everything of the genius creation that is Spirited Away belongs to Studio Ghibli and/or the Genius Himself: Hayao Miyazaki. *bows down in full prostration to the idol of him sitting above her computer* That nifty quote used in the summary belongs to another idol of mine, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 

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Dreams are strange things. When one dreams, she has no idea she is dreaming, for everything seems logical. All aspects of the dream world may be impossible—the colors may be brilliant beyond any true manifestation, the characters may be far more bizarre than anything seen in the world, the situations may be utterly preposterous to even suggest—yet in dreams, they are accepted as existent, thus logical. 

And when one first awakens from the dream, she does not recall dreaming such. If she should remember the experiences of the dream, they seem to be real memories of real situations. 

Only after extended consciousness following the dream does she realize that it was, indeed, just a dream. 

Thundering through abundant green growth, the bulldozer sent clouds of dust billowing up from the dirt road into a azure sky. It shoveled a few trees out of its way before it plunged into a grassy clearing, marked by prior machine tracks. Those machines sat, rumbling impatiently, near a deteriorating large red building. 

The late bulldozer sputtered to a stop, and a young man sprung from its cabin. "What's the problem, Bunta?" he called as he wiped the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead. 

A middle-aged man lumbered from his own machine, his face contorted in disgust. "Some _girl_'s tied herself to a column in there," he replied, waving his hand towards the slender entranceway of the building. "Refuses t'leave, and won't say nothin' except that. Seems to think these little figures are special." 

Here he kicked a small statue seeming to bestow welcome to visitors entering the building. "Probably from the historical society or summat," Bunta concluded in distaste. "Anyway, she won't leave, and even I wouldn't run over a girl." 

"Let me have a talk with her," the young man offered. He had an inkling who the girl was, just from the singular behavior she had displayed. He had known a girl at school quite captivating in such oddity. "I think she's one of my friends." 

"Do what y'like—just get her outta here. We're supposed t'have the place torn down by today." 

The young man smiled wryly and strode into the dank, dusty tunnel stemming from the entrance. 

Close to the old red building was a modern subdivision. Almost seven years ago, the Ogino family had moved in; a small incident with the moving company (the family had arrived nearly a month after they had scheduled with the moving company) spread anticipatory whispers through the quite proper suburban neighborhood. Much to the gossiping neighborhood's disappointment, Mr. and Mrs. Ogino were as normal as could be imagined. 

Their 10-year-old darling daughter, Chihiro, was cheerful and buoyant and full of spirit, looking forward to starting school and making new friends. When she had entered her new school, the children flocked to her energy and courageous leadership. But somehow, after five or so years, the originally lively little Chihiro began to close herself away from the world; her initial friends drifted away.

What a shame, the neighborhood concurred. Though, indeed, it was the girl's own fault that she was antisocial, for the neighborhood's ideal sons and daughters had welcomed her—more than she deserved to be welcomed, besides. Yes, if the girl so insisted on being _different_, then she was best left alone. 

The parents made sure to impart this to their children, who had already come to the same conclusion on their own. 

After emerging from the Spirit World, Chihiro retained few qualms about beginning a new life in this new town, since she had just established a life, and friends, in another world. Full of energetic resolve, she appeared in her school with a vivacity she hardly thought herself to possess. At once, she made fast friends among the students. 

At first, she would return from school with secret pangs of longing, lonely for her friends of the Spirit World—especially Haku, who had not yet fulfilled his promise to find her again. However, Chihiro soon was absorbed in the much more _present_ world of humans; less and less could she recall the finer details of her experiences in the Spirit World. 

Increasingly, those experiences faded out of reality, along with her longings. As Chihiro entered adolescence, she had to repeatedly convince herself that the she had actually visited the Spirit World, that her friends were not merely characters in a storybook she had read as a child, or the products of a fantastic dream. 

…Or were they? 

Chihiro could not remember. 

At the height of her popularity in school, sometime while she was 15, Chihiro began to lose ammunition. She had three years past completely dismissed the Spirit World as a dream, and ever since had immersed herself in the material life: friends, school, and so on. 

Without the Spirit World, it was the easiest world to believe in—though it was quite, quite empty.

A flock of teenage girls swarmed onto Kimiko's bed, bouncing and giggling, passing candies and confectionaries amongst themselves, caressing tubes of make-up and face color. Shrieks of laughter erupted as they selected a scandalous party game to play together, that would force even the shyest of the girls to divulge a bosom secret. 

"Come on, Chihiro!" the hostess beckoned to a girl not usually so diffident. 

Chihiro had earlier cited illness as reason for her reluctance to bounce and giggle; in truth she had no idea why she felt so lethargic. Now, as she grasped her knees in a fetal position in the corner, she was content to watch the antics of her friends. 

With a concerned little sigh, Kimiko approached Chihiro and embraced her. Clasping her friend's hand in her own, she squeezed it once then rose again to join the party. 

Chihiro opened up her hand, which now bore a small token of friendship, and gazed down at the Kompeitou—little star shaped candies—sprinkled in her palm. In a sudden convulsion, she stuffed them in the pocket of her jacket. 

Returning from the friend's party the next morning, Chihiro wandered absentmindedly through the verdant forest behind her house. She trudged up the abandoned dirt path, past the fanciful tiny houses under the great trees, around rotund little statues—until she faced the tall building she had not seen in five years. 

The once-crimson paint was peeling off badly enough that it was hardly red, more rust-colored, like old, dried blood. Autumn had long ago rendered the trees bare and haggard, and leaves cluttered the ground in dreary shades of brown. Smothering any hint of sun, thick clouds gathered in a pale, blank sky. Utterly different from her first encounter, the scene still clenched a fierce grip around her heart. 

Why should it? Chihiro asked herself airily. She found the answer to that so distressing that she completely ignored it; she had convinced herself long ago that it had been a dream. It was mightily dangerous to contradict such a conclusion, because she, like all adults, had lost her belief in the fanciful, and she had built her life around that disbelief.

Of course, Chihiro did not think this all out. She scrambled out of the clearing and ran the rest of the way to her house as if the devil was chasing her. 

After that first visit, Chihiro was irrevocably drawn back to the old red building. Eventually, she began to come every day after school to unconsciously ponder the allure of the building, taunting, tempting herself to believe. Following the school day, a sharp longing wrapped itself tightly around her and towed her to once again stand in that clearing. 

Now, as she peered warily into the tunnel, a bitter gust of wind suddenly arose and tugged at her jacket, beckoning her inside. She had formerly refused to indulge the longing as far as stepping inside, but…

She surrendered, sprinting through the tunnel into the spacious train station room. Inside the columned room, the stained glass windows had been broken in several places. Pale light wafted through what remained of the windows to cast pale colors on the stone floor. 

Distantly, the sound of a train whistle echoed…

And a single giant tear escaped Chihiro's wide, bewildered eyes, tracing a salty path across her ashen cheek. She stumbled out of the building and somehow found her way stumbling back to her house; she stumbled up the stairs and stumbled onto her bed without regard of her surroundings. 

As she turned her head to the light of the lamp beside her bed, she caught a glimpse of something purple glittering on the bedside dresser. Immediately, a numb hand grabbed it and held it up to her eyes for scrutiny—the purple hairband woven for her by Kaonashi and Bou and the Yu-bird and Zeniiba, of course. Of course! How had she been so stupid as to forget that loving evening in Zeniiba's cottage, lit by the glowing fire and the love that pervaded every action? How could she have ever forgotten? 

Chihiro clutched the hairband, pressing it to her cheek to be drenched with a flood of tears. 

__

How could she have ever forgotten?

Chihiro began to draw away from life. 

Alternately she would ignore her material surroundings in preference of the company of memories, then attend ordinarily to the passage of human time. She might wash her hair once in a week but forget the next six days; she could begin an exam and, at the end of the period, being staring off dreamily out the window, the essay not even half finished. 

During the dreamy times, she closed herself off from friends at school, mumbling a monosyllabic answer to their cheerful questions. At the end of school, she clumsily gathered her books together in her satchel and wandered back home. If her parents were lucky, she would arrive within an hour of school release. 

Her professors started receiving vacant stares and uncompleted papers in response to their assignments. Her friends were utterly ignored. To end such uncharacteristic disrespect, her concerned parents forbid her leave the house except for school, after which they drove her home and confined her to her room. However, this punishment served only to further Chihiro's tendency to lose herself in daydreams

She would apathetically complete homework when coerced, but otherwise slept or sat blankly on her bed, the purple hairband clasped tightly in her hand. 

Vaguely aware of her surroundings, Chihiro knew she could not explain everything to her worried parents, resentful friends, and confused professors. Really, if she had convinced herself that the Spirit World did not exist, then how could she convince them? Her experiences in that world had originally forged her confident self; there she had made extraordinary friends and had found true love—yet she had denied everything. 

Denial of those pure things was blasphemy of the soul. All along, under the pressure of a "real" world discouraging belief in a Spirit World, her suppressed soul must have been straining: now it had freed itself, broken through violently. It was searching for some kind of fulfillment, but it had discovered there was no adequate venue in the "real" world. Neither a genuine Rin nor Kaonashi nor Kamajii—nor Haku—could be found, despite all possible memory-searching. 

When night befell the human world, Chihiro often dreamt of drowning—but it was always heavenly. She awoke one night on the usually damp pillow and heard bitter voices emanating from her parents' bedroom. 

"They're tearing it down, at last," Ogino Yuuko muttered. "The old dump is a hazard."

"Still, it's historical culture," her husband, Akio, protested. "Remember, when we first moved here? We walked through and into the meadow…"

"It's a hazard—especially to Chihiro," Yuuko's voice repeated harshly. "She started going back there, and that's when all this nonsense began.

"Maybe some spirit there has enchanted her," Akio teased.

"Don't joke about such things," his wife rebuked. "I'm just glad it's being destroyed. You know," she added, sounding exasperated, "I shouldn't have even brought it up; whenever I try to talk…"

Chihiro ceased listening as yet another altercation brewed between her parents. Still shocked at her mother's first comment, she stared at the dark wall—they were decimating the train station building. Would that have any effect on the Spirit World? Maybe not—but it would certainly desecrate any spiritual value to the little sanctuary in the forest. She could not allow anything to harm her connection to all that she had left behind.

"Let me have a talk with her," a young man's voice echoed down into the train station room, where Chihiro had tied herself to one of the columns in protest. His clomping steps approached, down the tunnel, until he appeared in view through the rising dust. 

"What are you doing here, Chihiro?" asked the young man, who she recognized as an acquaintance from school, Takehiko. 

"What are _you_ doing here?" she countered. After all these ignorant construction workers attempting to oust her, she was both dejected and more infuriated than ever. 

"I work here, you know that," replied Takehiko amicably. "Now, really Chihiro, why are you here?"

"You wouldn't understand," she muttered, hanging her head. Suddenly she turned her face up to him in open defiance. "But you don't need to understand; can't you realize that this place is special? Almost sacred? Can't you feel that?"

Takehiko frowned, for indeed he had felt the tiniest misgiving when Bunta had kicked the little statue—and he was hardly the abstract type. "I'm not—" he began to object, but was interrupted by a shout from his coworkers. 

"Takehiko! Come out here, now!" The frantic yells were emphasized by roars of machinery. 

With a final glance of misgiving at Chihiro, the young man jogged out into the clearing. After nearly ten minutes of confused shouts and wild mechanical rumblings, the noise finally died away. 

Following a few moments of silence, Takehiko sprinted back to where Chihiro sat, somehow not too astonished at such odd circumstances. 

"I don't know how you did it," he growled, out of breath. "I'm sure you'll be glad to know our 'dozers started up right on their own, wreaking havoc on the operation. Yes, this is all your blasted doing, I know it." 

She had no pity for him, actually laughing to herself a little when he ran off after his company. She had an idea what—who—had wreaked such havoc, though she had no idea _how_. Her heart celebrated and sobbed in one song.

Skipping aimlessly through the green forest growth, Chihiro took her time getting back home. When she at last reached her house, she was surprised by the nature of the welcoming party. 

"Girl, do you think you can simply dismiss the word of your parents?" her father demanded, braced against the doorframe as if to lessen his fury. "Where have you been?" 

No answer came from the bowed head. 

"The lack of respect you've shown to all your elders these last six months—it's outrageous—it's _intolerable_," Yuuko hissed. She shook her head, seeming to clear her anger. "All we want is what's best, everything for your wellbeing," she urged. 

"Then let me be!" Chihiro wailed, unable to keep silent. "I'm fine without your '_help_!'" This was not quite true—she knew she wasn't fine—but her parents could not offer any helpful solution to what afflicted her. 

A deadly silence ensued, which her father broke with his strained mandate: "You will address your mother and I as ma'am and sir, Ogino Chihiro." 

"Studies show that children reared in military atmospheres suffer mental and emotional difficulties later in life," Chihiro whispered half-consciously. 

"Has she picked this attitude up from her friends?" her mother cried, turning to her husband. "I thought we would keep her from that by grounding her." 

Akio's small eyes narrowed. "She's proven herself to sneak out before. Have you been seeing a boy?" 

Chihiro regarded Yuuko and Akio eye to furious eye. "That's a good idea," she murmured. She twisted around her father and out the door, and fled from the little suburban neighborhood. 

Though she hadn't visited in nearly ten years, the location of her destination was ingrained in her permanent memory. She ran then walked, not needing to sleep or eat or drink; dreams arrived unbidden despite sleep's absence, and the journey seemed a waking dream itself. They were the same lovely dreams of drowning. 

Night dusted celestial Kompeitou sprinkles into the dark sky that was itself a giant convention of Susuwatari. A cool spring breeze followed Chihiro as she plodded along an empty two-lane highway. Even while a lone car would zip past on its late-night mission, blinding her with its headlights, she heeded it not and continued steadily. She had her own mission of sorts, for which she didn't particularly need to attend to this world. 

There was a bridge. This helped the mission considerably. 

"Kohakusui…" she whispered, tossing the name out into the dusky depths below her. The breeze carried it gently to land in the lapping, receptory waves. 

She slung her arms around the slanted bars of the bridge, letting herself hang down to feel the damp spray on her cheeks. As in her dreams, the contact was heavenly—but not enough. 

She smiled, and let one hand off the supports. 

Dangling out in darkness, she called again, "Kohakusui…"

Regret, in the form of her parents' and friends' loss, flashed before her while she hung over the water. However, no other way existed: this is what her mind had established, and was why she had so long struggled over belief. 

"Haku," she sang as she loosened her grip on the bar. 

She let go, allowing for the breeze—now a fierce wind—to buffer her, until a gentle embrace caught her in midfall. Strong hands cupped her face and turned it up so she saw jade green eyes, eyes that swept through her completely. 

They hovered over the water, hands clasped with arms outstretched, staring into each other in wonder. 

The voice was the same as she had managed to forget, then managed to recall. Ethereal and yet ever so present, he whispered in her ear: "It's time for you to come home."

Shimmering down over the water was the affectionate sky of Susuwatari and Kompeitou. 

~~

Peace. 


End file.
